Election Result

New Margin: LIB 2.5% (changed party)

(*) - The party status of this electorate has changed. See notes on redistribution below.

MP

Steve Irons (LIB) since 2007.

Profile

Directly across the Swan River from central Perth, the electorate of Swan covers the area between the Swan River, Canning River and the Roe Highway. A diverse electorate of 126 sq.km, it includes the suburbs of South Perth, Como, Victoria Park, Rivervale, Belmont, Ferndale, Lynwood and Langford, covering a range of housing types from low price flats to more affluent suburbs with Swan River views. Includes the campus of Curtin University, the Welshpool and Kewdale industrial areas and Perth Airport.

Redistribution

The new boundaries for Swan cross the Canning River to gain the Labor voting suburbs of Ferndale, Langford and Lynwood from Tangney. This converts the existing Liberal margin of 0.1% into a notional Labor margin of 0.3%.

History/Trivia

Existing since Federation, Swan was represented from 1901 to 1918 by Sir John Forrest, former state Premier and senior minister in 7 Federal cabinets. Often held by the Country Party before the war, Swan has been a metropolitan electorate since 1949. Swan was represented by Kim Beazley from 1980 until he moved to contest the safer Labor seat of Brand at the 1996 election, escaping the declining Labor margin of Swan brought on by demographic change and redistributions. Beazley was succeeded in 1996 by Liberal Don Randall, whose only brush with notoriety during his first spell in Federal Parliament was a distasteful parliamentary attack on Cheryl Kernot after she left the Australian Democrats. Randall was defeated in 1998 but has returned to Canberra as representative for Canning since the 2001 election. Labor's victor in 1998 was Kim Wilkie, who narrowly clung on to Swan until the 2007 election when he was defeated by just 164 votes, a reversal of his 104 vote victory in 2004. New boundaries mean that Swan's sitting Liberal MP Steve Irons will need to increase his vote to win re-election in 2010.

Polling

A Patterson Market Research/Westpoll survey published in the West Australian on 24 July had the Liberal Party leading 52%-48% after preferences. The poll had a small sample size of 400 and reported first preference votes as Liberal 47%, Labor 37% and Greens 10%.

Assessment

Likely Liberal victory, making the seat a notional Liberal gain.

2010 BALLOT PAPER (7 Candidates)

Candidate Name

Party

HAMMOND, Tim

Australian Labor Party

LOPEZ, Joe

Socialist Equality Party

LEIGHTON, Rebecca

The Greens

KLOMP, Steve

Christian Democratic Party

DRENNAN, Barry

Family First

IRONS, Steve

Liberal

TREASURE, Bret

Australian Sex Party

CANDIDATES

Tim Hammond

Australian Labor Party

Hammond grew up in the electorate of Swan and these days lives in South Perth. For the last decade he has worked as a lawyer with compensation specialists Slater and Gordon lawyers, initially working in general personal injury law but these days specialising in asbestos litigation. He has also represented indigenous landowners in class actions against large international corporations in Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. In 2007 and 2008 he also spent time in a volunteer capacity working and living in Punmu, a remote aboriginal community in the North West of Western Australia. As well as other sports, he has a passion for white water paddling and takes part in the annual Avon Descent, a marathon white water race down the Avon and Swan rivers.

45-year-old Lopex is a hospital worker. He has been a member of the party since 1984 and has written for the World Socialist Web Site on what he states are the the devastating consequences of the underfunding of the public health system and of escalating living costs that lie behind the image of Western Australia as a 'boom' mining state.

Leighton is currently studying law at Murdoch University. She is a volunteer worker at the Freedom Centre, a support centre for gay and lesbian youth. She states she is studying law in order to defend the rights of disadvantaged people and fight for social justice.

Drennan has been married for 29 years and has two adult daughters. He has spent the majority of his life as a music teacher, along with other interests such as audio/video recording and the production of music theatre shows. For ten years he also ran a clothing design and manufacturing business with his wife that employed seamstresses were deaf and mute. He now runs a photography business with his daughter.

51 year-old Irons was born in Melbourne as the sixth child of 10 in the Dix family. He was placed in a baby's home at age six months and was fostered out, as were three of his siblings. He did not meet many of his natural family until he was an adult. His foster parents were church ministers and social workers and grew up in middle class Box Hill. He points out that both his sets of parents were Labor supporters and his biological father a member of the member of the Painters and Dockers Union, his uncle Bob Dix a former union secretary, and Irons jokingly refers to him being one of the few secretaries of that union who died of natural causes. After finishing an apprenticeship, Irons worked in various jobs, digging sewers, shovelling chook manure and working a jackhammer at an abattoir before packing his bags and moving west to play Australian Rules football for East Perth. He had an undistinguished football career, playing one league and 45 reserves games in Perth before hanging up his boots. He ran a wholesale air-conditioning company before his election to parliament at the 2007 election.

Treasure grew up and was educated in Perth, completing a Bachelor of Business Degree in Marketing and Japanese. He worked in marketing positions with Colgate-Palmolive and the Mars Group on the east coast before moving back to Perth in 1984. He has spent twenty years in Fremantle bringing up a family and ran several businesses including an art gallery and a franchise of household milk rounds. Since 2002 he's worked as a freelance marketing consultant, primarily in the area of web marketing.